Waiting for the Day to Come
by afraidnotscared
Summary: Watching Tom with Saoirse now though, she couldn't help but feel that after everything they had been through and how hard they fought for what they had, as little as it might seem to some, this was always the way it was meant to happen.


_Okay so.. obviously this is AU from S3. Sybil is alive and the 'Ireland' storyline never happened for obvious reasons of suckitude, so they are still living there. There's a little bit of smut partway through, I've marked it with line-breaks because I know a couple people don't like reading it! Also my first time writing so please be nice. :) HUUUuuGE thank-you to Repmetsyrrah, ScarletCourt, and Sim for beta-ing/encouragement/lending an ear to my whining! Anyway, on with the show I suppose..._

* * *

_To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.  
_- David Viscott

_January 1921  
Dublin_

She didn't think she would ever tire of seeing him hold their daughter.

Tom came from a very large family, and when they first arrived in Ireland Sybil had been surprised by the seemingly endless sea of faces that greeted them at his mother's house. The children (many of whom were so young they had never even known him ) instantly took a liking to Tom and insisted on crawling all over and wrestling with him; activities which he happily indulged them in. Before Saoirse's birth she had seen him plenty of times with various nieces, nephews and baby cousins, but nothing could have prepared her for how overwhelmingly intimate and life-changing seeing him with their daughter would be.

The first time Tom held her, Sybil had felt something shift and fall into place inside her, and all she could think was that everything had lead up to this moment: If a young man hadn't compromised his principles and traveled across the sea to a country he despised, if he hadn't dared to give a handful of pamphlets to his employer's lonely daughter, if he never thought to ask for her hand, and if that daughter had not had the courage to say 'yes' ... Then the child in her husband's arms would never have existed.

Sometimes it made Sybil anxious to think how much the future depended on the past.

Watching Tom with Saoirse now though, she couldn't help but feel that after everything they had been through and how hard they fought for what they had, as little as it might seem to some, this was always the way it was meant to happen.

He was currently pacing the floor of their bedroom, chest and feet bare, with Saoirse in his arms, the little girl fighting sleep as he rubbed her back and softly sang a lullaby in Irish.

Though certainly not fluent in the language, Tom had been teaching her, and she knew enough to understand the basic premise of the song was unrequited love and murderous jealousy. "Are you quite sure that's appropriate subject matter to be singing to our five-month-old?"

Tom stopped singing to give her a rueful grin. "I knew I'd come to regret teaching you Gaeilge." He glanced down at Saoirse. "Is she sleeping?"

"Out for the count, it looks like."

He made his way over to the baby's cot and laid her down, making sure she was well protected from the chill with the thick blanket his mother had knitted in anticipation of Saoirse's birth. She fussed a bit and Tom almost groaned when he saw her open her eyes briefly, but to his relief she settled back into sleep. He tenderly ran a hand across her downy hair, already so much like her mother's, and placed a kiss on her forehead before checking on the fire and heading to his own bed.

He slid under the covers and gathered his wife in his arms, chuckling when she let out what he could only describe as a purr while she stretched out beside him and then snuggled in closer, her head nestled in the crook of his neck.

"It's strange," Tom mused after a few moments of silence while he played with her hair and watched Saoirse's tiny chest rise and fall in her sleep. "To think this time last year there was only the two of us."

"Well _I_ think it's rather wonderful." She smiled up at him and her face was so open and full of love and contentment with just the tiniest hint of mischief that he couldn't _not_ kiss her.

* * *

"It is at that, love." He agreed before kissing the tip of her nose and then her cheeks and her chin and she was giggling by the time he got to her mouth and it was the most wonderful thing, kissing and laughing all at once. All of a sudden, the mood shifted, as it so often did with them, and their kisses became more heated and insistent. She moved to sit astride him and cradled his face in her hands, her thumbs brushing back and forth against the stubble on his cheeks.

His hands wandered up the tops of her thighs, dragging the hem of her nightdress along until it was bunched up around her waist, then slipping them underneath the material to smooth along the small of her back.

Sybil broke the kiss and drew away from him to rise up on her knees. Holding his gaze she took his hands in hers and let him help her lift the nightdress up over her head and then tossed it to the floor.

This wasn't the first time they had made love since Saoirse's birth, far from it. But there was something about tonight that was making Tom feel especially sentimental. He took the time to study her body, her skin glowing faintly orange in the half-muted light the fire cast about the room, noticing the changes motherhood had wrought on her body; the fuller breasts, the rounder hips, the dips and swells both revealed and hidden by the flickering light. Even the very way she carried herself now seemed different to him, so wonderfully different.

Suppressing a groan he brought her flush with him, kissing her feverishly and hoping to convey without words everything she meant to him.

He gripped her waist and rolled them over, propping himself up on his forearms, careful to keep his weight off her still sensitive breasts. His pyjama bottoms quickly joined Sybil's nightgown on the floor.

"Is it alright, like this?" He whispered, after they'd settled against one another.

She shifted beneath him. "Yes, I have my diaphragm in."

He huffed out an incredulous laugh and leaned down to kiss her before asking, "are you ever going to tell me where you get them from?"

"A woman never reveals her secrets, Mr. Branson." She replied smartly, a devious gleam in her eyes. "Now, where were we...?" She reached down between them and started stroking him.

"Right about there, I think," he groaned, burying his face in her neck and moving his hips to match the pace and rhythm her hand set.

"Shhh, you'll wake Saoirse." She kissed his temple and ran her fingers through his hair with her free hand, loving the way he fisted the sheets in his hands and panted into her skin.

Tom could only grunt in response, too focused on what she was doing to him to form any coherent thought. Before things could progress past the point of no return, however, he quickly reached down and stilled her hand, bringing it up and pinning it to the pillow beside her head. "Careful, love. Don't want to finish me before we even get started."

She bit her lip and gave him a naughty smile. "And what if I did?"

"Didn't someone once say something about women's rights starting in the bedroom?" He asked mirthfully, letting go of her hand and moving it down between her legs, grinning like an idiot when she gasped his name as he found his goal.

She was trying her best to keep quiet, but it was rather difficult when her husband was insisting on the contrary. "I believe it was 'home', not 'bedroom'."

"Semantics." And after that there wasn't anything else said as Tom studied his wife's face while she came apart at the seams, covering her mouth with his own to swallow the sounds she made.

Sybil's eyes fluttered open, a soft smile gracing her lips as she reached up and traced Tom's jawline, the bridge of his nose, around his mouth, running her hand through his hair to bring him in for a slow, sweet kiss.

She wriggled against him impatiently and tugged on his hair gently, letting him know she was ready.

He pushed into her, and they both closed their eyes, scarcely believing how good the other one felt.

She clutched his back as he moved inside her. Her legs tightened around his waist while he cupped her bottom and shifted her hips until he was hitting a certain spot deep in her that sent electric shocks right to her core and made her toes curl.

"Oh Tom, _darling_," she moaned breathlessly, arching up into him. She blindly reached a hand behind her to grasp the headboard, the bed creaking while their bodies rocked lazily against each other.

"Fuck, you feel so _good_, love."

"Tom, watch your mouth around the- oh!" Tom had suddenly pulled out of her mid-scolding and coaxed her onto her hands and knees. She knew what her husband was up to; as her pregnancy had advanced, they had had to get creative to accommodate her growing belly. This had been one of her favourite positions, and he knew it.

Leaning over her, he braced his weight on one hand and used his other to guide himself inside her, both of them moaning softly at the feeling of being reconnected. "She's asleep, _ma mhuirnín_," he couldn't help teasing. "Who's she going to hear?"

Sybil was past caring about getting the last word in at this point, and simply told him to be quiet and finish what he started; a directive he was happy to comply with. While they moved, Tom slipped his free hand down her belly to gently tease her. She was already so close, and the position they were in always seemed to help her find her release much quicker than usual, that it wasn't long before she was grasping at Tom's talented hand with her own and covering her mouth with the other to muffle her moans as she tumbled wildly over the edge.

Tom wasn't far behind, pressing his face into her hair and murmuring her name like a prayer. He sagged bonelessly against Sybil, trying to catch his breath as quietly as possible while riding out the aftershocks.

* * *

"You're rather heavy, you know." Tom looked down to see her giving him a cheeky grin and he couldn't help but return it.

"Beggin' your pardon, milady." He kissed her shoulder and rolled over, allowing Sybil under his arm to curl against him. They lay for several moments in silence, just the sounds of their breathing and the occasional hiss and pop of the fireplace filling the tiny room.

"Tom?"

Sybil's gentle prompting roused him from the light doze he'd slipped into, and the hesitation he noticed in her voice brought him fully awake. "What is it?"

"I've given it some thought and... once Saoirse's been weaned, I don't want to go back to work."

_That_ caught him off guard. He lifted his head off the pillow and pulled away slightly so he could study her face. "Why not? I thought you'd be happy to pick up nursing again."

"Well, the thing of it is... I'd like to- that is, I'm _going_ to-"

Tom had never heard Sybil so unsure of herself before, and the fact that she seemed almost _afraid_ to tell him whatever it was she had decided was worrying to say the least. He sat up fully and faced her, preparing himself for the bombshell she was about to drop. "Sybil, darlin', it can't be as bad as you're making it out to be." He winced when it came out sounding a tad desperate. Needing reassurance just as much as she did, he reached over and untangled her fingers from the sheets she had been nervously twisting. Giving her hand an encouraging squeeze and brushing his lips against her forehead he silently urged her to say what she needed to.

Sybil took a moment to compose herself, wondering _why_ she was so nervous in the first place. This was _Tom_. Her darling Tom who only ever wished for her happiness and believed in change and progress as much as she did. "I'd like to go to school- to medical school. I want to study to become a doctor."

Forgetting for a moment that there was a sleeping infant in the room, and only able to process how relieved he was that Sybil wasn't telling him she was taking their baby and leaving him or dying of some incurable disease or some other equally dismal scenario, Tom did the worst thing one could do under the circumstances: he laughed. Loudly.

"_Tom_," Sybil hissed out a warning, but it was too late. Saoirse started fussing in her cot, with no signs of stopping anytime soon.

"Shit, I'm sorry love- I didn't mean-"

"I thought I told you to watch your mouth around the baby." She cut him off irritably, and he noticed a slight tremor in her voice while she snatched her nightdress off the ground and pulled it over her head while making her way over to Saoirse, who had begun full on crying at this point, grouchy at having been woken up and now, probably hungry as well.

Sybil picked the screaming girl up and bounced her around a bit, smacking gentle kisses on her head in an effort to calm her down, "Oh, my poor darling girl. Did your da wake you with his awful racket? What a beastly man he is."

Tom felt that was a bit much. "I said I was sorry-"

"Yes, truly awful," she spoke over him in the sing-song voice she used when talking to the baby. "Perhaps he should reflect on his awful behaviour on the sofa."

Tom hadn't had the pleasure of being banished to the sofa thus far in their marriage, and he had no intention of starting now, so he did what any self-respecting man would do when confronted with a wrathful wife. Namely, he grovelled.

He quickly pulled the blankets aside to allow her to get into the bed with the baby, and he made a valiant attempt to surrender his own pillow to support the baby whilst she nursed, but Sybil was having none of it. "Honestly, Tom. I can manage, thank you very much." She shrugged her shoulder out of its sleeve and held Saoirse to her breast to which she happily latched onto and began feeding noisily. Sybil cooed at the baby and played with her feet whilst she fed, doing her best to give Tom the cold shoulder.

By now he had noticed the red around her eyes and the occasional sniffling, and he knew he had hurt her, however unintentionally. _That's usually how it goes, I suppose._

He sighed. "Sybil, honestly love. I said I was sorry. I didn't mean to laugh-"

"But you _did_ laugh." She kept her voice down as best she could, not wanting to upset Saoirse, but it had _hurt_ having the one man who was supposed to be on her side in all things laugh at her confession. "I thought you, of all people, would understand how important something like this would be for me. What it means to me."

"I do know how important this is for you," he responded in earnest. He grasped the hand that wasn't supporting the baby and turned her face towards him. "I wasn't thinking, Syb. I was just so relieved you weren't telling me you were- were _dying_ or leaving me, I didn't know what else to do."

She studied his face for a moment, looking like she was caught halfway between forgiving him or staying angry. She settled on being mildly annoyed. "Sometimes I wonder about the things that go on inside that head of yours, Tom Branson."

He grinned, flopping back against his pillow and covering his face with his hand. "Nothing to write home about, to be sure."

Pursing her lips to try and keep the smile at bay, not wanting him to think he was completely off the hook (he did wake Saoirse, after all), she raised an aristocratic nose in the air and informed him, "I only wanted to make sure it was alright with you before I went ahead with it."

He removed his hand from his face and shot her an incredulous look. "Liar. You'd have done, anyway."

"Yes. I would have."

How she managed to look both peeved and pleased with herself at the same time would forever remain a mystery to him. He had it marked down to her Crawley blood.

Now that he was sure he was mostly back in her good graces he hoisted himself up into a sitting position and wrapped an arm around her shoulder to draw her against him. He kissed the crown of her head, and then bent to do the same to his daughter, who was too busy gorging herself and could not deign to acknowledge her da. "Truly, Sybil. I'm sorry. I didn't set out to hurt you; you know that's the last thing I would want."

"I suppose I overreacted," she conceded with a slight blush. Saoirse had just finished and Sybil switched her to the other breast before continuing: "I was thinking I could use a part of the money papa gave us. I know it bothers you to use it, and we were saving up for Saoirse, but we're doing much better now, don't you think? And he gave us rather a lot..."

It was true; they were doing better than they had the first year of their marriage. He had gotten a decent promotion at his paper for his tireless coverage of the war, and specifically for his article on the burning of the great houses by the IRA as a tactic of guerilla warfare and a symbolic statement. And after many (many) arguments, he had learned to swallow his considerable pride and came to accept that, for now, every now and then they would need help, even if that help came in the form of his aristocratic father-in-law's money.

"Look, you know how I feel about using that money on myself." He held out a finger to his daughter, who grabbed onto it. Feeling her tiny hand squeeze his finger in time with her suckling made something tighten inside his chest. "The money is _yours_, Sybil. If this is something you truly want, then why on earth would I object? I didn't marry you to lock you away or set you on a shelf to be admired. The things you want for me, I want just as fiercely for you. This is a house for the both of us."

Sybil felt the prick of tears at the backs of her eyes, albeit for a completely different reason this time. Her husband was a truly wonderful man, if at times cocky beyond belief and insufferable, but it made her sad to think how he was an exception, rather than the rule. Despite her growing excitement at the prospect of _actually_ pursuing an education, something she'd only ever dared dream about, she thought it wise to caution him as his wont was to usually fly headlong into most things. "It won't be easy."

He shrugged and gave her a lopsided grin. "When have we ever done easy? That's not you and I."

"No. No it isn't." She laughed and leaned into him for a kiss. She closed her eyes against her few remaining tears and concentrated on the feel of her husband's lips against hers and the weight of her daughter in her arms. No, they never did 'easy'. They fought for what they wanted, which made the having all the sweeter.

Tom broke away from the kiss when Saoirse waved a chubby arm in the air, clearly offended at not having her parents undivided attention. He chuckled and picked up one of her little feet to give it a kiss. Sometimes he still couldn't believe he was a father, that he had a hand in creating another human being.

He settled back against the pillows and pulled Sybil closer, resting his cheek against her head. _Truly, I am the luckiest man alive_. How could he have known all those years ago that he would have gone to England in search of a job and instead come back home with his other half? Life was sometimes wonderful like that. "We'll be happy together, won't we _ma mhuirnín_?"

She didn't answer right away, but she smiled widely. And Tom thought that even when she's old and grey, she'll never lose that perfect, beautiful smile.

He needn't have asked, of course, but she liked talking about it. Gazing down at the little girl feeding at her breast, she knew that the future would always be uncertain, but when she replied to his gentle query, there wasn't any doubt in her mind. "Yes, Tom, I believe we will be."


End file.
